“About nothing,” I cut him off. “People are just jealous because I’m better than them.”
I reach my room and slam the door behind me, leaning against it as the scratching sounds surge and fade like waves. The house feels different somehow. Alive. Like something is moving inside the walls.
Moving toward me.
I walk to my dresser and stare at my reflection in the mirror. For a long moment, everything looks normal. Perfect Briar with her perfect blonde hair, perfect skin, and perfect fucking life.
But then I lean closer.
There. Along my jawline, I can see it, the faintest hint of something that definitely wasn’t there this morning.
Not quite fur, but not quite skin either.
Like the finest down, barely visible unless you know what to look for.
And my teeth. When did they get so sharp?
I back away from the mirror, my heart hammering.This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. I’m Briar Hartley. I’m perfect. I’m in control.
But the scratching is getting louder, more urgent, and I can hear something else now. Something that sounds almost like... calling.
My feet carry me to the closet without conscious thought, and there my mouse doll sits, waiting.
I reach for it with trembling hands, and the moment my fingers touch the worn fabric, the scratching stops.
The silence is somehow worse than the noise.
I hold the doll close to my chest and sink down onto my bed, staring at my reflection in the darkened window. The girl looking back at me has wild hair and bright, feverish eyes. Her jawline is soft with something that might be fur in the right light.
She doesn’t look like a queen anymore.
She looks like prey.
Ican’t sleep.
The scratching has gotten so loud that I swear the walls are going to crack open.
I can trace it now, following the sound as it moves through the house. Along the baseboards, up through the walls, across the ceiling above my bed. Sometimes it stops right above me, like whatever’s making it is listening. Waiting.
My fur is spreading faster now. What started as a few patches has become a coat that covers most of my torso and arms. I’ve stopped trying to shave it because every time I do, it grows back thicker and coarser within hours. The bathroom trash is full of razors I’ve dulled trying to fight the inevitable.
My face is changing too. My features are sharper, more angular. My nose seems smaller, more pointed. And my ears, God. My ears are getting bigger, more prominent.
When I pull my hair back, I look like some kind of nightmare from a horror movie.
But it’s the teeth that scare me most. They’re definitely sharper now, more pointed. When I smile in the mirror, I look like something that wants to bite. Bite. Bite.
The scratching gets louder, more urgent, and I can’t take it anymore. I have to know what’s making that sound. I have to find it.
I toss off my blanket, grabbing a flashlight from my drawer and following the noise. It leads me down the hall, past my parents’ bedroom where I can hear Dad’s gentle snoring, past the guest room that nobody ever uses, to the end of the hallway where there’s a small closet we use for storage.
The scratching is coming from inside.
I open the door slowly, shining the flashlight into the cramped space. Boxes of Christmas decorations, old photo albums, Dad’s college textbooks. Nothing that should be making noise.
But the sound isdefinitelycoming from in here. From below.
I move boxes aside, my enhanced hearing picking up every small sound, the whisper of cardboard against cardboard, the soft thud of items being displaced. And underneath it all, that persistent scratching.
